Every year on Valentine’s Day, Jim Smith and Frank Reifsnyder join a group of gay activists and news crews in a fruitless trek to the courthouse.

At the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder’s Office – decorated with flowers for the traditional onslaught of weddings the day brings – the couple and others ask for marriage licenses at the clerk’s window.

As cameras roll, they are handed a sheet explaining why state law prohibits the clerk from issuing them a license.

Next Valentine’s Day, though, things may be different.

The California Supreme Court’s decision Thursday overturning the ban on same-sex marriages means those coveted licenses can no longer be denied to gay and lesbian couples.

Smith, 40, who works at Ultramercial, an online advertising company in Palos Verdes Estates, said he was “thrilled and overjoyed” with the ruling.

“Of course we’re going to get married as soon as we can because that will give us access to a time-tested structure for uniting our family and raising our children,” Smith said.

The couple has 14-month-old twins, a home and a domestic partner registration that gets them many of the rights of married couples – including $600 in car insurance savings every year.

But the registration, Smith said, is just a “facsimile” of a marriage license.

“People don’t get married for the rights, they get married for the social acceptance and they get married for each other,” he said.

The partners were not the only people in the South Bay celebrating the 4-3 ruling. And employees at Cherished Vows chapel in Torrance hope many of them will use their facility to tie the knot.

“There is a lot of interest,” said manager Julie Nixon, who expects to conduct the chapel’s first gay marriage in June. “We believe there’s going to be a lot of couples in the South Bay that want to get married. We anticipate a flood of people.”

But exactly when marriage licenses will be issued remains in question. Paul Drugan, a spokesman for the county Registrar-Recorder’s Office, said the county’s attorneys are analyzing the decision and have not figured out how soon to begin issuing same-sex licenses.

There are those who felt what the majority of the justices did was plain wrong.

“It’s obviously a very bad decision,” said the Rev. Michael Pera of Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Wilmington.

“It attacks the traditional idea of what a family is and what a marriage is,” Pera said.

Pera said the Catholic Church views marriage as a legal union between a man and a woman because that is what is best for the children, and the only natural way to have offspring.

Legalizing a union that can’t support children the “natural” way only leads to problems, Pera said.

That view was echoed by Luis Pineda, a 46-year-old aerospace engineer in El Segundo and a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

“There is more to marriage than just the union of a man and a woman,” Pineda said. “It has to do with family and the foundation of society being family.”

Pineda said there are differences in the way men and women raise children. Those that are raised by same-sex parents are deprived of the balance provided by the different genders.

Pineda said his opinion does not mean he’s anti-homosexual; only that he believes a marriage is sanctified by God between a man and a woman.

Deacon Dennis Carlson at the Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Gardena said his church also opposes same-sex marriage, but he personally has “mixed feelings” about it.

“Personally, I believe gay people have rights to everything. But when it comes to the context of marriage, that’s the one area that bothers me,” Carlson said.

Carlson said he hoped that the ruling will be discussed in a “healthy environment” free of hate, adding that everyone – gay or not – is made by God.

“And God does not mistakes,” Carlson said. “Although, sometimes I think he created diversity to challenge us in our own faith.”

The Rev. Donna Lee Merz of the First Presbyterian Church in Gardena also finds herself in a bit of an awkward position with her church regarding same-sex marriage.

“I’m very, very pleased,” Merz said of the ruling. “The Presbyterian Church, overall, is still struggling with this issue.”

She said the ruling made her feel hopeful that people are starting to open their minds to different ways of life.

She questioned why people nitpick over who loves whom when there is war, people dying in Darfur and horrible natural disasters that kill thousands, like the recent earthquake in China.

“And we get upset because two people want to commit their lives to each other?” Merz asked. “Maybe we can finally get our priorities in order.”

Jim Dawson, 72, of Torrance is a registered domestic partner to Wayne Flottman, 73. They’ve been a couple for 48 years, but they haven’t talked much about an actual wedding ceremony.

Now they can.

“I haven’t determined exactly what the next step is, although it would appear that we would apply for a marriage license,” Dawson said.

Dawson said he was happy when he got an e-mail from the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund notifying him of the ruling.

Lambda was one of hundreds of legal, religious, civil rights and government agencies that weighed in on the cases as they made their way through the legal system.

Dawson and others said they were excited but weary about what lies ahead. In November, there may be a ballot initiative that would amend the state Constitution to make marriage only between a man and a woman.

Dawson predicts that the battle on both sides of the initiative will be long and costly.

“The feelings of the population are so evenly divided, I’m nervous how it might turn out,” Dawson said.

“However, we’ve got to remember that California is a major player in national trends,” Dawson added. “So hopefully, at some point, we will prevail.”

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